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Ubuntu on my Dell XPS M1330 – Booted with the MediaDirect button

So when my motherboard was replaced, MediaDirect stopped starting up, so there was no Media to be had from the button, Direct or otherwise and the button itself booted Vista and then started the MediaDirect application. Thinking I had a brilliant idea, I set out to see if I could boot Ubuntu using the MediaDirect button and Vista using the Power button, only to find that hundreds of other people have done that before to.

However none of those guides worked because I simply couldn’t manage to install GRUB to the extended partition due to many many errors. Finally, I deleted MediaDirect, installed Ubuntu in a couple of logical partitions and went back to using Windows. Then today, I decided to finish the job, and with LiveCD in hand proceeded to fight the demons of distro installation under esoteric conditions. GRUB kept failing trying to find stage1 and stage2 files, and no matter how many tricks I tried, none of them worked. Until I discovered this lovely parameter to grub-install.

So with GRUB already installed on the logical partition (as part of the Ubuntu installation process), I just had to point grub-install to the right place to get all the files from:sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/disk-1/ /dev/sda4
and boom! I had a bootloader on the extended partition.

The best part is that I’d already installed the Dell bootloader (the one that handles the difference between MediaDirect and Power) configured to look at the third and fourth partitions and so I shut down and hit the MediaDirect button and then much happiness ensued. At least until I saw how fonts looked in Firefox :)

The command to run from the Dell MediaDirect disc is:rmbr.exe dell 3 4
Remember to start cmd.exe with Administrator permissions (right click, Run as Administrator). The only problem is that ‘Restart’ always means ‘Restart into Windows’.

Marc: Actually I installed it just for the coolness of having separate buttons to boot separate operating systems. Next, I’ll see if grub can boot an operating system that I place on an SD card. If it can do that, then I can just switch cards and switch operating systems, how awesome is that?!

Chitra: I certainly am not, this place looks like a desert. Never fear, I will make readable posts also.

hey
u own an dell XPS M1330???
actually this comment might be completely out of the path
but got to ask
does ur notebook experience any heat sink problem???
mine did and its totally useless
check out my blog for details